


Brand New Ancients

by na_scathach



Series: valgrace week 2020 [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25009819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/na_scathach/pseuds/na_scathach
Summary: Hera, and her relationships with her Champions.
Relationships: Jason Grace/Leo Valdez
Series: valgrace week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810756
Comments: 15
Kudos: 100
Collections: 2020 Valgrace Week





	Brand New Ancients

**Author's Note:**

> whats up my dudes. welcome to valgrace week, organised by the lovely bunkernine (this is her ao3 leovaldez) and i hope i wont be the only poor bastard posting this week :). no serious topics discussed today but there are faint mentions of abuse so be wary if that isn't your thing! hera is also kind of a bad person, and her views are definitely not mine. 
> 
> today's prompt is champion. i got kinda carried away. <3
> 
> (also, title is from Kate Tempest's poem Brand New Ancients)

Time moves so quickly for immortals. Time is a fleeting, dangerous thing to beings like her. Days are minutes and years can last a few breaths. She can remember the Old Days, when Titans still roamed the earth and civilizations bowed beneath their feet, when she was young and her Mother had not yet faded from this existence. 

She remembers Greece, the height of their power, sacrifices, and belief so strong and sweet it made her _dizzy_. 

( _she remembers, and at the same time, doesn’t, the time when she wore goat-skins and lead rome to greatness, the mother of the state. those memories buzz like flies around her and she swallows around the acidic ichor that forms in her chest)_

Her son, Hephaestus, has always been a mystery to her. She bore him as an act of defiance. She could not break her marriage vows, but she would show her husband what it was like to be on the underfoot. 

And then she bore an ugly, wailing, weak thing. Fragile. Gods were not meant to be fragile. Gods were meant to be strong and beautiful and _godlike._ The babe she bore was lame, half-blind, and ugly. She would have been the laughing stock of Olympus if she presented this...thing, to the others. She was meant to be a goddess of motherhood, of family, but the urge to show Zeus up was too powerful to ignore. She had been burned and scorned too many times. 

She threw the babe from Olympus’s highest point. 

Hera. Queen of the Gods. Rhea’s youngest daughter. Goddess of women, marriage, family, and childbirth, forsook her child to get back at her husband. 

She turns away. She does not think of the babe. It is easier like that. To sow her mouth shut and watch her husband desecrate their marriage bed with another lowly nymph or cup-bearer. 

Then, at one revelrous celebration, Thetis flows into Olympus adorned with gorgeous jewelry, celestial gold, and sea-shells, adorning her dark skin and a beautiful crown of delicate, silver metal is set upon her thick black curls. Her ocean-blue eyes glow with pride and smugness. She knows what she looks like. Hera sneers at her, but her eyes follow the glowing, perfect metalwork clinging to her. 

Aphrodite, the oldest of them all, flitters and flutters around Thetis and her new jewelry like some petty mortal woman. She fawns over it and the Love Goddess demands that Thetis bring the jeweler to Olympus. 

Thetis dodges and shifts, and Hera feels watched. 

The Fates sow and cut. 

Thetis brings the jeweler to Olympus. Her foster son. An Olympian. 

He's ugly, with a deformed leg and half-blind with storm-dark eyes and inky black hair. 

Hephaestus. Forge-God. A child of fire raised beneath the waves by Thetis, who loved him, where Hera could not. She sees none of herself in him. He’s quiet and shy, eyes cast downwards and Hera cannot, even for a second, believe that this is both an Olympian and Hera’s blood-son. 

Then he tricks her and ties her to a chair. For petty revenge. _Then_ she sees the similarities. 

Hephaestus, even after being accepted into Olympus, is an outsider. His wife sleeps with another man, while he spends his days in his forge causing volcanic eruptions. He still continues to make jewelry for his foster mother. He also continues to embarrass the gods themselves. Cruel jokes and jabs, proving he truly is Hera’s son. 

He joins their myths. 

Hephaestus is unlike most of them. He cares little for battle or war. He’s an artisan, a god of humanity. He gifts Prometheus with fire from his Forge and wonders at the curiosity and brilliance of mortals. He builds Pandora and calls her _daughter._ He cares for mortals, sees them as more than the ants they are. He is...strange. 

He is strange and cruel, but for mortals? He has found a well of kindness. 

When his Foster Mother’s son goes to war against Troy, Hephaestus builds his brother’s Arms, and those Arms go on to kill Ajax. He builds Athena her Aegis and Cupid his arrows. 

He does not seek fame or glory. He seeks something much more human. 

Love. Acceptance. 

He will never get it. 

* * *

Emiliano Valdez is tiny. 

Hera supposes most mortals are, but-

He is no bigger than a man’s fist. Tiny tubes hooked up to his body, keeping his failing body alive. He’s barely visible inside the strange little box he’s in with all the tubes. 

Hera places her hand on the box. It’s warm. The machine beside her beats in a constant rhythm. Childbirth is a complicated process, and human bodies are delicate. She knows this more than anyone. Losing a child is- incomprehensible, cruelty invented by the Arai themselves. But it happens. 

Humanity has come far with their machines. Emiliano is only being kept alive by these machines. 

Hera moves on from him and drifts towards the bed where Hephaestus’ lover sleeps. She’s young, even by mortal standards, with dark brown skin and wild, dark curls that spread out against the pale bedding. She’s exhausted and Hera feels a budding flower of respect in her. Hera is a goddess of mothers. This one has been through so much. 

“Mother,” Hephaestus grunts, slipping into the room. 

“Hephaestus,” she greets airily, her eyes still on the little mortal. The mortal woman is named Esperanza Valdez. _The hope of the Valley._ She’s not beautiful, not in the way most would see, but Hera can see why Hephaestus would care for her. She’s got broad shoulders and heavy, calloused hands, with little scars all over her body. 

A worker. A builder. 

Hephaestus stands over the boy’s little box. “What are you going to do? He won’t live much longer,” she asks, ghosting a hand over the woman’s sweaty forehead. “It would be kinder to let Thanatos take him”

Her son growls at her and Hera stills in her petting. A sharp grin flits across her face. Some spine, at last. “Well,” she says conversationally, “do you have a better idea?”

Hephaestus shifts and shuffles, his breathing labored as he leans on his cane. “I do,” he says, his rough voice quiet. She knows what he must do. 

Gods do not love in the same way mortals do. Mortal love is a desperate, sweet thing, tinted with their mortality. The need to fit themselves into someone else’s cracks because they only had so much time on Earth. Hera is the goddess of marriage. It is a sacred thing, to her and its why she and Aphrodite do not often see eye to eye. Love is much more powerful than marriage. Love is desperate and cruel and sweet as blood. Love is a mortal thing. 

Gods love the idea of mortals. They love certain aspects of them, love what they represent. How little time they have on earth and how brightly they shine because of it. Dangerous little things, mortals. 

In turn, the gods do not know how to show love. 

At their base, all gods are very much like narcissus. Cruel, mindless creatures who are cursed to love themselves. They do see the beauty of the mortal world and they adore it, but they can only ever truly love themselves. At least narcissus was cursed. They have no excuse. 

And so, when they see a mortal who shines like a flare, they gift them parts of themselves. 

Demigods. Godlings. God-blooded. Those who straddle the line and will never belong fully to either side. Little shards of gods swaddled in the same wrapping as their mortal parents. 

Hephaestus cares for Esperanza Valdez. As much as gods can. He will make sure this little creature carries her image and name to the myths and stars. He will give Emiliano Samuel Valdez white-hot ichor and a burning heart. Blood made from liquid melted gold, and eyes made from heated bronze. 

Fire made mortal. Made weak. Trapped under his paper-thin skin. 

Hera looks at this dying-but-not babe and sees Fate spilling out from his dying body. Sees destruction and creation at his dark fingers and heat in his closed eyes. 

She connects. 

* * *

  
  


Zeus has always been unfaithful. 

That is who he is. Cruel and a whore, who sleeps with anything that moves. He is a creature of pride, ambition, and selfishness. Their father’s son, to a fault. He rules carelessly, and at the same time, with an iron fist. He proclaims himself a god of justice, but breaks his vows with every second breath. He is the youngest of Rhea’s children, but he sees himself as the oldest of them _all_. Aphrodite never challenges him and Hera sees that as one of Fate’s many tragedies. 

Zeus has had many lovers. _Too_ many. He enjoyed it, devotion, adoration ( _condemnation_ ) from hapless mortals, or weak nymphs. Hera saw him as her husband, who she loved, who she had a duty, and a vow to. She did not fall at his feet or see how powerful he was. She saw him as simply _Zeus_ , and that is wherein the problem lay. 

This Grace woman is just another warm body, another adoring mortal for him to tease and give gifts to. She is a starlet. Beautiful, young and coming from a wealthy family. The youngest daughter, who had the world at her fingertips. She glowed with the same pride and ambition that Zeus did and, as such things go, gods can only love themselves, or at least, the mirror image of themselves. She was a cutthroat little thing, who fought and bled to reach her place on the silver screen. She crushed her enemies underfoot and saw herself as far above them all. As if she was a god herself. 

Dangerous, prideful thing, with blonde hair and soft blue eyes. Her wings would burn up soon enough. 

Zeus gave her many gifts, but his gifts to her so far have been unkept promises and two little godlings. 

Thalia Grace is angry and blonde like her mother, with her Father’s eyes and his thundering footsteps. She is Zeus’ child. All lightning and bravado. Hera, to be honest, cares little for her. Another one of Zeus bastards, who glows with his unrestrained power and arrogance. She has her mother’s pride and her father’s power and she is an unrestrainable force of nature.

Her brother, in turn, is quiet but- calm. Like a gentle breeze. Bright blue eyes and skin like a summer breeze. Light and soft. He is a different creature entirely. She was not present for his birth, but just like Leo, she has been watching him since he was pulled from his mother. Since his screams caused thunderstorms and he made his toys float with a gentle breeze. 

Hera stares down at the child, who is staring up at her, big blue eyes curious and tired. A red, barely-healed scar on his lip shines in the dark of the forest. 

“Hello, Jason,” she greets, reaching down to pick him up. He’s light, probably due to the fact he’s not being fed enough. Jason blinks at her, eyes still scanning her face. Intelligent for his age. 

“Hi,” Jason says, voice airy and light. He is all wind and calm summer days. Unlike his thundering sister, he is the calm before the storm. Just as dangerous, but you don’t realize it until there’s a tropical storm above your head and he’s staring you down with those blue eyes. So like his mother. 

Lupa will mold him into something _great._ Something great and terrifying and _powerful._ He’ll hurt and he’ll ache, but Fate does not care for loneliness or that ache you get in your chest when you think _‘what if-’._ He will be Hera’s soldier and Leo will be her engineer. 

Jason leans his head against her shoulder, which is exposed by her white chiton. Her black cloak is heavy and drags behind her. “Can you bring me to mommy? Or Thals? M’cold, n’tired. Mommy told me she’d come back,” and his voice is filled with hope and trepidation like his mother will appear from behind the thick trees at any moment. The sky is dark and glitters with stars. He is cold. Hera wonders how long he’s been here. She pulls him closer. She is the goddess of motherhood _(a babe swaddled in dark cloth is thrown from olympus-)_ and she will take care of this babe for as long as she can. 

She hefts him closer and he buries his face in her cloak. He smells like vodka and cigarettes. “Hush, little hero. You’re safe. I’ll bring you someplace warm” and she whispers this into his wild, greasy blond hair. He’s obviously confused and doesn’t understand that he’s been left as a sacrifice, like a weak spartan babe. He’ll learn soon enough, but for now, Hera will not take away that hope. 

He buries his nose against her skin and sighs, babyish legs swinging slightly as she walks. His fists are curled into the fabric of her chiton and his breath is warm against her shoulder. His life will be beyond difficult. He will bleed and ache and stand apart from his peers. Because not only is he a child of Jupiter, but he is Hera’s Champion. A herald of doom, giantsbane, and the boy who will face Gaia. The boy who controls the wind and air and spits lightning. 

But he will not do it all alone. 

She pulls the skinny boy close and walks deeper into the dark, California woods. Wolves howl in the distance and Hera’s (?) cloak turns into soft goatskin and her face grows harder and Juno feels Lupa call for her and her new cub. 

Jason Grace will be reborn in the cold forest, beneath the moon, surrounded by rich earth and cold air, wolves with soft grey coats circling him and his lips trembling as Hera leaves him with the wolf goddess. 

Leo Valdez will be reborn in the fires of his own making, while his home crumbles around him. He will be hard and unrelenting as steel, as fierce as fire as he’s molded by the cruelty of mortals. 

The Goddess will watch it all. 

* * *

  
  


Hera half-expected this. 

She had hoped to pair Aphrodite’s girl up with Jason, but love proves to be more powerful than marriage once again, and she watches Jason Grace smile down at an overly-active Leo Valdez. 

They had grown up so differently. One in New Rome, trained to kill, to lead Rome to greatness and always, always, do what was right, what was _expected_ of him. To be Lupa’s perfect ward, the perfect soldier, the perfect Son of Jupiter, never toe the line-

The other had grown up in homes filled with danger. He had taught himself how to cover bruises and act like it never bothered him. To act how people wanted him to act. Hide all the parts of him that were _‘strange’_ and cut parts of himself off to fit their mold. He grew up surrounded by people with sharp grins and sharp knives, who taught him how to survive on the streets. 

In a sense, they’re very similar. Both had to change to survive. Both don’t know what it means to be Jason Grace or Leo Valdez. So different, yet, like mirror images, so similar. Two sides of the same cursed coin. 

Her Champions. 

Her wards. 

She _raised_ them. Watched as they were put through war and abuse and death. Watched as they struggled and begged for help. She had just as much right over them as their long-gone mothers (and maybe when beryl grace went over that bridge, hera smiled. she remembers the smell of cigarettes on jason and the pocket-mark burn scars on thalia’s pale hands. maybe hera asked aeolus if a storm could be arranged that night-) 

They’re on a _date,_ as Aphrodite calls it. Leo is excitedly pointing out how each amusement works and Jason watches him ramble about rollercoasters. Jason gently searches for Leo’s hand and the boys stop walking. Leo grins, small, but genuine and knits his long, scarred fingers with Jason’s. 

He goes back rambling about rollercoasters. 

Hera has hidden herself between the mortals on _Coney Island._ The boys bob and weave through the crowd stopping every so often to play a petty mortal game. Leo wins multiple shooting games and gifts all his prizes to a flustered Jason. 

Young love is powerful enough to even drag a small smile out of Hera. 

She’s content to watch them, her ( _children_ ) wards. Simply...existing. Being in love, being _alive._ At 19, her boys are older, though they still look as young as they did as babes to her. Leo’s dark curls are short at the sides and his already dark skin has darkened with the sun. He’s still as short as he was at 15, but he’s less _malnourished_ and just _l_ _ean,_ now. His dark eyes glitter with joy and Hera’s blood-red lips quirk up at his shameless smile. 

Jason has changed, too. Just as tall, meaning Leo’s head only reaches his shoulder. Broad, but his hair is shaggy and wild, parts of it streaked with a messy blue dye that looks fresh. He laughs freely and his blue eyes are as bright as the first time Hera ( _Juno_ ) found him in the woods. 

Fire and Oxygen. How fitting, she thinks. 

Her eyes follow them as Jason finally wins a game and he gifts Leo a small plushie, and Leo barks out a laugh at the tiny thing, obviously making fun of Jupiter’s boy. Jason pouts and Leo says something, most likely something idiotic and mocking and-

Oh. 

She turns her gaze as Leo leans up and into Jason, arms circling his neck loosely. She takes this as her cue to her leave. Eternity stretches before her and it is unwise to get attached to two little boys with too much god-blood. Foolish, _unwise-_

She gets up and turns her head, right before she steps out of this reality-

Leo is looking right at her. Brown eyes like melted bronze, sad and bitter. Jason follows his gaze and his electric-blue eyes meet hers. Leo’s lips curl into a bitter grin and he lifts a hand in greetin- _goodbye._ This is goodbye. They’re standing side-by-side on this boardwalk, the sun setting behind them. Little half-mortal boys, who she raised-

‘ _Goodbye, Tía,’_ Leo mouths through the crowd separating them. He looks...bittersweet. Sad, but as if he knew this was coming. Jason is more conflicted, his eyes now icy-blue, his scar bright white against his lips, which are pressed together. 

Her Champions. Who she hurt and molded against their will-

But Gods do not love in the same way mortals do. She gifted them with parts of herself, by giving them her name, her title. She gave them shards of her divinity and they glow with it. It ties them together. Whether any of them want it or not. 

She loves them, in the only way she knows how. 

‘ _Goodbye, Lady Juno,’_ Jason mouths to her, eyes shiny and hurt. 

They deserve a life without her influence, and she will gift them that, so long as they carry her name. Her Champions. Her wards. The only demigod children she will ever have. 

‘ _Goodbye,’_ and she steps back, watching them be swallowed up by the golden light of the sun as this reality fades from view. 

The last thing she ever sees of her boys is their hands, entangled, dark bronze and pale marble, clung tightly to one another. 

**Author's Note:**

> come shout at me on my tumblr Kidz <3


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